When You Are Old

Last year, I wrote a post about Yeats and losing in love. And that enduring, hopeless love of his produced "When You Are Old. It's been stuck in my head for weeks. A poem can't be a requitation for love, for that kind of love, but it's something.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Apocryphal Dream Poetry

On my last night in Lisbon, I dreamt that I was reading my friend's blog and that she had updated it — after a long silence — with this poem. It could be straight out of the Greek Anthology.

The shepherd Meanderos climbed the mountain crags

following the tracks of errant sheep.

Sudden storms caught him near the peaks

and now he is lost, wandering alone in the trackless snow.